“I have made his acquaintance,” I temporized.
“I do not see him very often,” she said. “He sends me five pounds on my birthday every year and he brought Al-’Ijliyyah as a present the last time he visited, but he and Charles quarreled so I do not think he will come again soon.”
“Al-’Ijliyyah! You have given her an Arabic name?” The dog put her nose forward tentatively and I ventured to hold out my hand for her to smell.
“I called her after Al-’Ijliyyah bint Al-’Ijliyy, an astronomer who lived in Aleppo before the Crusades. Can you imagine?” she asked, her eyes shining. “She was making scientific instruments a thousand years ago.”
“A worthy namesake,” I agreed.
She rolled her eyes. “Mary doesn’t like it. She refers to her as Jilly and now everyone else does. Only Anjali calls her by her correct name.”
“She seems a good friend,” I began.
Effie let out a sharp bark of laughter that startled the dog. “Did Mary ask you to speak to me?”
“How did you know?”
“Because she does it with anyone she thinks might be able to persuade me to listen.” She pitched her voice into an exact impression of her sister-in-law’s affected tones. “‘Effie, you mustn’t consort with the help. It simply is not done and it sets such a bad example for the children.’” She rolled her eyes again. “As if I care about setting an example for the children.”
“You are not fond of your nephew and nieces?”
“I loathe the little horrors,” she said frankly. “The twins are babies and therefore unspeakably dull. Little Ada just stares with a sort of terrifying intensity as if she is trying to see underneath my skin. And the less said of Geoffrey and his obsession with putting things in cages the better.”
“I have never been inclined to like children myself,” I admitted. “I am far more content with butterflies and dogs.”
Al-’Ijliyyah nosed closer to me, shoving her snout under my hand until Effie laughed. “She wants you to scratch behind her ears. She is a peremptory little beast, but I am fond of her.”
I obediently scratched behind the dog’s ears, earning myself a delicate little lick when I was finished. I looked about, surveying the stacks of notebooks and instruments arranged on a series of low shelves so as not to impede the view from the vast windows. A telescope, ancient-looking with a wide, cracked lens, stood in front of one of the windows. The expansive vistas made the small room seem quite spacious, and I was conscious for the first time since arriving at the Hall of a sort of quiet peace.
“I like it here,” I told Effie. “I see why you have made this your bolt-hole.”
“When it is clear, you can see almost to Torquay. And at night, the stars are as numerous as grains of sand upon the shore.”
My gaze fell upon the orrery, the planets still making their revolutions around the sun, some of them almost imperceptibly slow.
“It was Granfer’s. And it was meant to be mine.” Her complexion flushed, an unbecoming color on one with gingerish hair.
“I am sorry,” I told her truthfully. “Perhaps it need not go,” I began.
“Charles insists. The telescope is worthless now,” she said with a nod towards the cracked instrument. “But the orrery is in excellent condition and rather rare. Italian in origin. Worth a considerable amount of money, so naturally Mary and Charles are interested in it. I have made my peace with it,” she added quickly, and I wondered whether to believe her. She went on. “Besides, I have Granfer’s research notebooks, and they are more valuable, at least to me. I am continuing his work.”
She paused and made a vague gesture towards the notebook in her lap.
“What is the work?” I inquired.
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Do you really want to know? People ask, but they never listen when I tell them.”
“I can believe that. One only has to watch someone’s eyes glaze over as you try to explain the distinctions between lepidopterans to know that such queries are seldom sincere. Mine is, I assure you. Tell me.”
She resettled her spectacles on her nose. “Very well. Granfer was fascinated by the work of Lockyer and Janssen in discovering an element they detected in the emission line of the sun’s atmosphere. They called it helium.”
“After Helios, the sun god?” I asked.
“Exactly,” Effie said. Her face was suffused with enthusiasm, eyes agleam as she spoke. She explained that while her grandfather was content to search for traces of helium on earth, she was more intrigued by the fact that it had been discovered during an eclipse.
“With the developments in scientific instruments, the observations that could be made during eclipses would be orders of magnitude greater than anything that has been possible before. We might further our understanding of how fast the stars are moving, what comprises them, and if it would ever be possible to reach them.”
Her dream of humankind sailing amongst the stars seemed farfetched at best, but I was in a mood to humor the girl. Too many people had been content to shatter her illusions; I would not be one of them.
“And what would it take for you to continue your research?”
“Well, it would help a very good deal if Charles were not selling my equipment out from under me,” she replied tartly. “But if I am honest, there are more advanced instruments with which I could do more. I have clung to Granfer’s orrery because it is of sound quality, and it is so beautiful. Its very antiquity is what makes it valuable to Charles. But a proper observatory with the latest, most sensitive telescope would enable me to do so much more.” A rueful smile touched her lips. “There is no point in wishing. Such a laboratory is quite beyond my means.”
“Yes, I understand a proper telescope alone is costly,” I mused. “I belong to a club for extraordinary women—philosophers, botanists, mathematicians, that sort of thing. We have a pair of astronomers amongst our members and only last year we were able to finally provide funds to establish them in an observatory of their own. It took a good deal of effort, but we secured enough contributions to purchase a tiny ruined castle on the shores of Loch Doon. Apparently the night sky there is quite unsmirched by the fogs and smogs of the cities.”
“Are you speaking of the Marvell sisters?” she asked, her eyes rounding.
“Oh, do you know them?”
“Know them! They are legend,” she breathed. “And you have met them?”
“Once or twice in the course of raising the funds necessary to establish them in Scotland.” The Marvells, Henrietta and Lucy, were somewhere beyond forty, vague, wispy-looking women with flyaway hair and the habit of trailing off in the middle of sentences as though they had lost the thread of their thoughts. Privately we joked that it was the result of spending too much time lost amongst the stars, but we jested only with the deepest affection. I went on. “I am afraid we shall see nothing of them now they have their Scottish aerie. They send monthly reports to the club and seem thoroughly content.”